In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 21/52

Only four books this week!

Clare in the Community is a radio series based on a comic strip.  It's about a social worker, and parodies the middle class and political correctness, with some excellent voice acting from, among others, Sally Phillips and Nina Conti.  Each series is made up of six 28 minute episodes, and I listened to the first two last week.  They've very enjoyable.  They count as a book because I got them off audible.

Melissa Explains It All is Melissa Joan Hart's autobiography.  I love Melissa Joan Hart.  I never got into Clarissa Explains It All, but I loved Sabrina and Melissa & Joey.  Happily, so did she, which means she talks about them a lot.  Sabrina more so, because at the time it was written, Melissa & Joey was pretty new.  You can sort of see how her character in Melissa & Joey is a slightly twisted version of her real self, and I like that.  I had fun with it.

Spooky Stories 2 is a collection I've owned for about fifteen years now.  I may have read it before, I honestly can't recall.  It's pretty short; nine stories from various authors and around 120 pages.  One of the stories is Gabriel-Ernest which I definitely have read in another collection.  I didn't enjoy it that much, but I kept reading it because I was at work and couldn't really get my hands on another book at the time.

Finally, How I Changed My Life is another non-fiction volume.  Shelley Wilson decided to split a year into twelve projects, including losing weight, completing NaNoWriMo, and being more crafty.  It's cute and short and there are lots of links in it.  I probably won't reread it.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 12/52

I read a LOT this week.  From Wednesday, I was off work with some sort of terrible lurgy.  I pretty much just slept and read for three or four days in a row.  Didn't eat which is probably why I fainted halfway through.

A Doll's House is a play I've read before.  Again, it's on wikisource, so I read it on a quiet Tuesday at work.  It's a classic, and considered to be one of the first if not the first feminist plays.  I saw it performed at the Birmingham rep when I was sixteen, which is ten years ago now.

True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle is another one I first read years ago.  Just over fifteen years ago actually - it was a gift for my eleventh birthday.  I think my friends just went round their local charity shops and came out with a handful of books, but I'm glad this is one of them.  It just blew me away.  It's about a proper young Victorian miss who ends up witnessing a mutiny on a ship.  Newbury Medal winner.

According to wikipedia;

A film adaption of the book is in development. It is to be written and directed by Danny DeVito, starring Morgan Freeman as Zachariah and Pierce Brosnan as Jaggery. Dakota Fanning was originally cast as Charlotte Doyle, but had to drop out as production was continually halted and she eventually grew too old for the part. Saoirse Ronan was later cast, but she also grew too old. Locations are being scouted in Ireland and shooting is set for July 2014.

Exciting!

I read The Eternal Enemy because I loved Remember Me by the same author.  Eternal Enemy is about a young girl who buys a VCR which can record the future.  She records the news and tries to prevent terrible accidents, until the day she sees her own face on there.  Unfortunately, she doesn't get all of the broadcast...something goes wrong.

That plot was described in Remember Me by Peter, one of the characters.  When I found out that Pike had actually written it, I just had to read it.  It's pretty interesting.   Heads off into sci-fi rather than horror, much like Koji Suzuki's Ring Trilogy does.

Silver Birch, Blood Moon is the fifth in a series of modernised or reimagined fairy tale anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.  I wrote a slightly longer post about the series here.

Because this volume was the first I read, I have a special fondness for it.  I love Precious obviously, but also the incredibly creepy retelling of Thumbelina, the romantic Rumpelstiltskin, and the terrible story of one of the princes who didn't make it through Sleeping Beauty's hedge.  Less fond of the retelling of Snow White, who lives in an iron graveyard and dies of tetanus.

Music Theory for Dummies is a book I bought myself for my birthday, along with my keyboard.  It's been pretty useful.  Took me a while to get through it, and I didn't quite take in all the bits about permutations of chords, but that's also covered in Piano and Keyboard All-in-One for Dummies which I'm currently reading.

Unsouled is the third part of Neal Shusterman's Unwind series.  It's set in a universe where abortion is not allowed, but you can have troublesome teenagers 'unwound' - that is, taken apart for parts.  Every cell is kept alive and donated to someone who needs it.  It's an interesting and well-written series, which really goes into the ramifications of that idea.

Finally, Don't Tell the Groom is one that popped up on Kind of Book, a site which will notify you of heavily reduced Kindle books.  I don't subscribe any more, because it was making my unread pile grow uncontrollably.

Speaking of which, my unread pile is now down to 107.  My goal is still to get it down to 100 or less by the end of the year, so I'm well on track for that, as long as I don't buy any more.

Anyway, Don't Tell the Groom.  It's about a woman who accidentally gambles away her wedding savings and then tries to organise a cheaper wedding on the sly so the groom won't find out.  She tells him she wants it to be a surprise, and from a money-saving point of view, it's interesting.  Some nice ideas, and even a shout out to Martin Lewis.  The gambling support is fairly well done too, though I'm not totally convinced at how easily the main character gave up on her bingo addiction.  I've never had an addiction, but it seems like it would take more than realising you have a problem, deciding to give up, and then only slipping up twice - once spending about £5 on scratchcards and once almost stealing a scratchcard from another bride's wedding favours.  It all seems a bit too easy. 

I mostly picked it up because it's very 'chick-lit', but touched on a serious issue which doesn't normally have a place in that genre.  I feel like more could have been done with it, but it was still a decent read.

In Which We Discuss Fairy Tale Anthologies

Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow have collected several volumes of rewritten fairy-tales.  Some of which are amazing.  And you know what drives me mad?  There doesn't seem to be a concise list of them anywhere.  There doesn't even seem to be a collective name for the series.  Even Goodreads doesn't link them together.  How am I supposed to collect them all?  Quite apart from the fact that not all of them are on Kindle.  Honestly.

• Snow White, Blood Red (1995) - I have a physical copy of this.
• Black Thorn, White Rose (1995) - I have a physical copy of this.
• Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears (1996) - I have this on Kobo.
• Black Swan, White Raven (1997) - I have this on Kobo.
• Silver Birch, Blood Moon (1999) - this volume contains my favourite story of the entire collection - Nalo Hopkinson's Precious.  I now own this volume on Kindle.
• Black Heart, Ivory Bones (2000)

Here they are.  I wrote that damn list myself, before finding that if you click very carefully and follow the right links, you can get to this page.  And no, you can't just get there by searching for "snow white, blood red anthology", don't be silly.

As far as I know, the only one you can't get as an ebook is that first one, Snow White, Blood Red, so I'm glad to have my physical copy.

It was actually searching for Precious that lead me to look all this up.  I was fairly sure I'd read it in the first volume I found, which I borrowed from Birmingham Central Library.  I just couldn't remember which one that was, and if I'd later bought a copy or not.  I knew I owned a few physical books, but wasn't sure how many, and I knew I had a few on kobo too.  Glad to have that straightened out!

In Which We Discuss A Story Exchange

Recently, Birmingham Central Library held a story exchange. The basic idea was, to tell a story, and to take a book in exchange.  The book I chose was Girl's Night In, a book of short women's fiction.  I loved it.  I have books by most of these authors, and for good reason.  Plus, I love short stories.

The story I told is a novel idea, one that's been knocking around in my head for a while now.  It's about a married couple, James and Elodie.  One day, a group of people find James, and tell him that his wife was specifically designed for him, to keep him happy.

In the future, most of the world is ruled by a Benevolent Dictatorship, which uses an empathy machine.  This machine lets people understand each other a little better, and helps people be more patient and to work together.  One group of people refuse to be a part of this, believing that it's mind control, and these Rebels have their own series of islands.  They are not interfered with, but they wish to destroy the dictatorship, and free everyone from what they perceive to be its tyranny.

In this future, James' descendants all share an immunity to this empathy machine.  The Benevolent Dictatorship don't want his line to exist, as they want everyone to have a choice as to whether to take part or not, and the existence of his descendants prevent this.  The Rebels, on the other hand, want James' immunity turned into a virus which they can spread to everyone.

A time machine exists in the future, but it can only send people back a certain amount of time.  Say that amount of time was a year; if you went back today, you'd go back to the 28th of October 2009, whereas, if you went back tomorrow, you'd go back to the 29th of October 2009.

For this reason, the Benevolent Dictatorship - who own the time machine - focus on James' life, rather than try to prevent his parents from meeting or something.  In the original timeline, James had a miserable adulthood, and two children by different mothers, neither of whom he stayed with (or particularly liked).  The BD's strategy is to create Elodie, his perfect woman, to meet him, marry him, and keep him away from any other woman.

Elodie isn't the only woman like her.  She has a huge family of sisters and cousins, all slightly different variations of what he might want.  They all have secret badass ninja skills, too.  I'm thinking the Rebels tried attacking her before they considered simply telling James, and that, later on, she and her sisters will be required to turn into an armour of pvc clad warriors.

At some point after James and Elodie were married, the Rebels gained control of the machine.  They tried attacking Elodie, which didn't work, so, eventually, they just told James.

I think James' reaction will be to leave, initially.  He's crazy about Elodie.  Their wedding song was "You Were Made For Me", and his feelings don't change just because he now knows who it was that made her for him.  But, he feels like his whole life has been a sham, and that she's tricked him.  He needs time to get his head together, to get over the shock.  I think, during this time, one of those children could be conceived.  Call it a semi-victory.

I've had James and Elodie arguing in my head for a while now, just slowly revealing their characters and their relationship to me.  There's also an odd moment where James' realises that Elodie's mother was his "older woman" option.

Part of the problem here is that, as it stands now, there's very little conflict outside of James' head.  He'll eventually realise that he loves Elodie enough that it doesn't matter that their happiness is also part of someone elses' plan.  Plus, it's tricky for me, because I believe the BD is in the right, so, again, very little conflict there.

That's why I haven't written it.  I need to blur the lines more between the good side and the bad one.